Dallas Vigil for Slain Gay Teens Voices Sadness, Anger, and Hope
Dallas, TX – A large crowd of vigil keepers gathered at the Crossroads in Dallas on Sunday night to remember murdered gay teens, Jorge Steven López Mercado of Caguas, Puerto Rico, and Jason Mattison, Jr. of Baltimore, Maryland. A third gay teen, Jayron Martin, who survived a vicious homophobic attack in Houston, was also remembered. A coalition of organizations led by Bob McCranie of the Carrolton Project and Daniel Cates of Equality March Texas met at the corner of Cedar Springs and Throckmorton, the historic center of LGBT life in Dallas to voice anger, to express their sadness in solidarity with the families and friends of the slain teens, and to send messages of hope and support from Texas to the loved ones of the boys who were attacked for no other reason than their sexual orientation. Other sponsoring organizations were Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ, the largest LGBT-predominant congregation in the world, Syangogue Beth El Binah, Resource Center Dallas, the Dallas Chapter of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and the Lambda Weekly. Speakers urged the gathering to turn their anger and sorrow into meaningful action for a just world, not only for LGBT people, but for everyone. As vigil keepers lit their candles, the names of 100 slain Transgender, Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual victims of hate crime murder were spoken aloud in the night. The march wound several blocks down to the Legacy of Love monument at the corner of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn, and then returned. Rainbow flags were signed by many of the participants with messages of hope and support for Jorge Steven’s family in Puerto Rico, and for Jason’s family in Baltimore. A giant card was signed for Jayron, to let him know of the support he has from the Dallas-Fort Worth LGBT community.
Flags for the deceased at the Dallas Candlelight Vigil
Houston Gay Teen Beaten with Metal Pipe Appealed for Help, But in Vain
Houston, TX – Jayron Martin, a 16-year-old freshman at Langham Creek High School, knew that school bullies were coming for him on Thursday, November 12, but his appeals for help to principals and to his bus driver fell on deaf ears. Hours before the beating that left him with multiple bruises and a concussion, Martin says he was tipped off that classmates intended to ambush and beat him for being gay. According to statements he made to KHOU-TV 11 News, Martin said that he immediately went to two school principals for help. Instead of offering him help, they told him to write out a statement, and they would call him in after reading and considering his fears. He wrote out a statement and took it to the principals, but no help of any kind was forthcoming, and the clock was ticking toward the impending attack. “They didn’t do anything,” said Martin. “They never called me down [to the principal’s office] or nothing.” No school official lifted a finger to help him or stop the approaching violence. The principals did not even inform his mother. Martin boarded the bus for home, knowing that the gang who promised to beat him up were riding it as well. “All they kept saying was, ‘We going to get you. We going to fight you,’ and all that and so when they started coming after me they were like, ‘You’re not going to be gay anymore.’” Martin said that he begged his bus driver for help, but the driver ignored the gay youth’s pleas. The attack came off campus, when Martin got off the bus. Nine boys got off at the same stop, and chased after Martin, who ran for his life to a neighbor’s house. “You don’t understand, I was just running for my life and nobody was like there at all. Nobody was doing anything for me,” said Martin. The bullies caught up to him at the neighbor’s house, and a seven-minute attack with a metal pipe commenced as Martin says he screamed for help. As a 16-year-old thrashed him repeatedly, the eight others stood around, witnessing the beating and egging it on. “They just kept hitting me,” he said. Finally his neighbor heard the commotion, saw what was taking place in his yard, and came at the assailants with a shotgun. He probably saved Martin from more serious injury or death. The youth recalled that his neighbor shouted, “Y’all need to stop! Y’all need to stop!’ And the boy wouldn’t stop and he just kept hitting me and hitting me and so he cocked his gun and that’s when he ran out [of the yard],” Martin told KHOU reporters. Harris County law officers arrested the 16-year-old who allegedly carried out the beating and charged him with aggravated assault. Since Martin’s attacker is a juvenile, the records of proceedings are sealed to the public and the press. Martin and his mother are convinced that the assault was an anti-gay hate crime. “I’m disgusted,” his mother, Lakenya Martin, said to reporters. “I’m sorry, after the fact doesn’t do it. The school district let us down. I mean, let all of us down because it could have been anyone’s kid.” The Cy-Fair School District has begun an investigation into the attack. The bus driver has been suspended with pay. Officials say they are looking into the actions of an assistant principal at Langham High. Mrs. Martin, however, is far from satisfied. “When the child does what they’re supposed to do and the adult doesn’t, what are you supposed to say then? How do you make him feel comfortable? How do you give him back that sense of security,” she said. She announced her intentions to move out of the neighborhood and the school district. Reports suggest that she is acting to sue the school and the school district in civil court. What makes this story all the more lamentable to us at the Unfinished Lives Project is that this entire tragedy could have been prevented if school officials had only acted responsibly and humanely. GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian Straight Education Network, reports that a 2007 survey of 6,209 middle and high school students found that nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students (86.2%) experienced harassment at school in the past year, three-fifths (60.8%) felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation and about a third (32.7%) skipped a day of school in the past month because of feeling unsafe. GLSEN research also points out that school officials routinely underestimate the danger posed to LGBT students by bullying in their schools. Jayron Martin will be remembered at at rally and candlelight vigil planned for Sunday, November 22, 6:15 pm in the heart of the LGBTQ neighborhood in Dallas.
African American Gay Teen Slaughtered in Baltimore
Baltimore, MD – A 15-year-old African American sophomore who was open to his classmates about his sexual orientation was found Tuesday, November 10 stuffed in a closet in his aunt’s house, raped, gagged with a pillowcase, and stabbed multiple times in the head and throat. The Baltimore Sun reports that Dante Parrish, 35, a convicted felon who knew Jason Mattison, Jr. and his family, was arrested on November 12 at a convenience store, and charged with first-degree murder. After release from prison, Parrish roomed in Mattison’s aunt’s home on Llewellyn Avenue, where Jason was also living at the time. Reports speculate that Parrish had forced a sexual relationship on the teenager. A spokesman from the Baltimore Police Department said that Parrish, who is being held in custody without bond, confessed to the murder. Jason was a joyous non-conformist, known at West Baltimore’s Vivian T. Thomas Medical Arts Academy where he attended high school as a witty, chatty young gay man who lived out his sexual orientation without apology. When other boys harassed him for his tight jeans and feminine-looking sweaters, he always seemed to have a quick answer, and would walk away from the encounter smiling. He had planned to become a pediatrician according to his teachers, who believed that no matter how cheery he appeared to be, the slurs hurled at him still hurt. When he came out to his family, there was some friction, but gradually they accepted him, according to his paternal grandmother, Mrs. Wanda Williams. Williams was among the earliest members of his family to whom he came out, and she admitted to reporters that his revelations caught her off-guard. She was worried about her grandson. “I accepted his sexual preferences,” she said. “But I told him, ‘You’re young and don’t understand life.’ I told him, ‘Plenty of young women would love to be with you.’ He said he likes boys. Young people don’t like to listen to adults, but I told him I’m not going to push him away.” Jason’s murder has devastated his grandmother. “I haven’t cried so much this entire life,” Williams said to The Sun. “My grandson hollering for help and there is nobody there to help him.” Many unanswered questions remain for family, classmates and friends. Why would his relatives allow Parrish to stay in the same house as Jason, given Parrish’s violent past? Were the reports of a sexual relationship with Parrish true, or fabricated by a man facing the worst criminal charges of his life? What were the circumstances that led up to one of the most gruesome anti-gay murders in the history of Baltimore? Jason’s funeral was held this Wednesday at Unity United Methodist Church. His cousin, Laquanna Couplin, who was also living in the house on Llewellyn where Jason was killed, told reporters, “He was a terrific boy, and we miss him very much. We’re hoping that justice is served and that the person who is responsible for this goes to prison and doesn’t get out.” She spoke lovingly of her young cousin, “He was a sweet young man. He wasn’t afraid of who he was. He had a life ahead of him. I just wish he could’ve had a chance to live it.” A candlelight vigil is planned Sunday, November 22 in Dallas, Texas to call for justice for Jason.
20 Years of Effort Led to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Act of 2009
Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr.
When President Obama signs the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Act of 2009 into law sometime next week, that moment will be the culmination of two decades of tireless work at the federal level to protect Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people from violent, bias-motivated crimes. The term “hate crime” did not enter the American lexicon until the 1980s, though crimes of violence against minorities that caused whole groups to live in fear. First introduced in 1989, Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA) of 1990 which mandated the that U.S. Department of Justice collect statistics on crimes that “manifest prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity” from law enforcement agencies across the country and to publish an annual summary of the findings. In the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Congress expanded coverage of the HCSA to require FBI reporting on crimes based on “disability.” Pursuant to the passage of the HCSA of 1990 and at the request of the Attorney General of the United States, the FBI first gathered and published this data in 1992, and has done so every year since. The collection and publication of data supporting the claims of the LGBT community, that they were indeed being targeted by terror-attacks, set the stage for all subsequent federal legislation relating to the protection of people who were being physically harmed because of actual or perceived sexual orientation. Transgender persons have been left out of any data gathering done by the federal government right up until the present, as if there were no violent crimes perpetrated against this important population of gender non-conformists. The FBI Sexual Orientation Hate Crimes Statistics for 2007, published in October 2008, recorded 1,512 persons or 11% of the total of the 9,535 persons victimized in physical attacks classified as hate crimes. This number of individual victims was the third highest of all victims of hate crimes, after race and religion bias crimes. Further, the 2007 figures show that two and a half times more Lesbians, Gay men, and Bisexual persons were victimized by murder or non-negligent manslaughter than any other group on whom the FBI kept statistics that year. Though flawed and under-counted according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, the incidence of violent crime against the LGBT community recorded by the FBI established something of the magnitude of the national crisis brought on by homophobia and heterosexism. In 1993, the Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act was enacted into law, allowing judges to impose harsher penalties for hate crimes, including hate crimes based on gender, disability and sexual orientation that occur in national parks and on other federal property. According to the Human Rights Campaign, the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, predecessor of the Matthew Shepard Act, was first introduced in the 105th Congress. At that time, 1997-1999, both houses of the federal legislature had Republican majorities. Successive attempts to pass federal hate crimes legislation covering LGBT people were frustrated until the 111th Congress. First named the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, then the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and finally the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (in memory of Shepard, a gay 21-year-old student murdered in Wyoming and Byrd, a 49-year-old African American dragged to death in Texas), the legislation moved steadily through Houses of Congress. The vote in the United States Senate on October 22, 2009 was the “14th and final time” this legislation faced a vote on the floor in either the House or the Senate.
Justice for Jimmy Lee Dean: Both Attackers Now Sentenced
Jimmy Lee Dean, Victim of Brutal Attack
Dallas, TX – The second man who nearly beat Jimmy Lee Dean to death in July 2008 has been sentenced to 75 years in prison. Bobby Jack Singleton, 30, faced his fate August 27 in Dallas County’s 194th District Court. The co-defendant in the case, Jonathan Russell Gunter, 33, received a 30-year sentence for the crime in March of this year. The Singleton sentence means that the jury understood the severity of the crime against Mr. Dean, who has been permanently disfigured and lost his entire sense of smell due to the attack. The earliest Singleton can be paroled is 37 1/2 years under Texas law. There is no penalty attached to an LGBT hate crime in Texas, though the Dallas Police who investigated the attack, which occurred just a block off the major LGBT entertainment strip in the city, treated the crime as anti-gay from the beginning. Had the Matthew Shepard Act been law at the time of the case, there would have been another recourse for law enforcement to take. Dean said that he was satisfied by the sentence. Testimony in the trial revealed that the co-defendants had drunk five pitchers of beer at a North Dallas bar before getting up the courage to travel to the Oaklawn/Cedar Springs area to rob gay people because the perpetrators were “low on cash” and believed gay men could be more easily robbed. Gunter took a gun with him and brandished it at Dean, a 17-year resident of the Oaklawn neighborhood, on a darkened section of Dickason Street. Singleton, however, did most of the severe damage to Dean as he lay unconscious on the sidewalk,
Gunter (l), Singleton (r)
kneeing him, kicking him, and stomping on his face with his boots while yelling anti-gay slurs at his helpless victim. The jury heard taped phone conversations between Singleton and his half-sister while he was in jail awaiting trial, in which he laughed about Dean’s nose hanging on by a flap of skin, and claimed that he was going to pretend he was gay so that the punishment might be lighter on him. “All I got to do is fill out one of them homosexual cards and prove that I’m a faggot, too,” he said. He went on to his half-sister that if he were sentenced to prison, he could just tell the corrections officers that he was “not really a fucking faggot” so that he could skip being housed in protective custody. Dean said to Dallas Voice reporter John Wright, “This [sentence] sets a precedent for anything like this that happens. He also said that no one should be a target of violence for any reason, including one’s sexual orientation. What now remains to be done is support for Mr. Dean in the months and years that follow this trial. LGBT presence at both the Gunter trial and the Singleton trial was sparse. Dean and his longtime roommate, Thomas Bergh, are contemplating moving to Oklahoma, away from the scene of the attack. Dean told reporters that when he walks along Dickason Street these days, he has to walk down the middle of the street, and not on the sidewalk where the two Garland, TX men nearly killed him. Like so many victims before him, Dean will live with the nightmares and the physical consequences of the attack for the rest of his life. It is not enough for the LGBT community to shrug shoulders now that that last trial has been held, and assume Dean can just go from this point vindicated. Dallas has to face its hate-crime problems, as the Dean case, and the Richard Hernandez case have both shown in recent months. One way to do that is to get support for Jimmy Lee right from here on out.
Decorated Sailor Charged with the Murder of Gay Sailor August Provost
August Provost pic on his MySpace page
San Diego, CA – The U.S. Navy says that a decorated petty officer has been charged with murder and other offenses in the June 30 slaying of gay Seaman August Provost at Camp Pendleton, California. Jonathan Campos, 32, has been in military custody since July 1, when the smoldering remains of Seaman Provost were found inside the guard shack where he stood sentry on the night of his murder. Campos, a Lancaster, CA native, enlisted in the Navy in 2001. He is a military fuel-system technician who had received numerous decorations, including the Good Conduct Medal. He has been charged with murder and arson, as well as charges of wrongful possession of a firearm, unlawful entry to a military base, carrying a concealed weapon and stealing military property. Forensic evidence shows that Provost was shot multiple times with a .45 calibre pistol. The sentry shack was then torched with Provost’s body inside in order to destroy evidence of the crime. The Navy continues to deny that the victim was killed because of his sexual orientation. Instead, naval investigators for NCIS contend that Provost surprised Campos as he was seeking to gain entry to the anchorage where hovercraft were docked in order to set one of them afire, and that Campos shot Provost at that time. Provost’s family and friends, along with gay rights activists, believe that his sexual orientation played a factor in the murder. His aunt has told the press that her nephew complained to her about being repeatedly harassed for his homosexuality, and that he had one prime antagonist on base at Camp Pendleton. Though it is not known whether Campos is that antagonist, both he and Provost served in the same unit, Assault Craft 5. Ben Gomez, head of the San Diego chapter of American Veterans for Equal Rights, a national LGBT servicemembers organization, said to San Diego 6 that he and other LGBT activists believe Seaman Provost’s murder was a hate crime. They contend that he was killed after having an argument about his sexuality with an antagonist on base. They do not find the Navy’s claim credible that Provost was a “random” victim. While the Navy largely bases their claim that sexual orientation did not play a part in Provost’s murder since he had never filed a complaint with his superiors about being harassed for being gay, family and the LGBT community counter that he could not have felt safe approaching his commanders at Camp Pendleton because of the threat posed to his continuing military service because of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT). Members of the U.S. House of Representatives from California and Provost’s native Texas are calling for a full investigation into the case.
“Full Military Honors”: The Irony of A Nation’s Thanks for a Murdered Gay Sailor
Houston, TX – The dignified notice of services attending the interment of Seaman August Provost appeared in the Houston Chronicle on July 9th: “SEAMAN AUGUST “B.J.” PROVOST III 29 A courageous soldier, passed away (Thurs) 06-30-09 while serving in the U.S. Navy @ Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, Ca. Visitation (Fri) 07-10-09 from 10am-11am @ Wright Grove Missionary Baptist Church; 9702 Willow Street. Funeral services will begin at 11am. Interment: full military honors will be given in his honor at Houston National Cemetery – (Gate-time 2:30pm). Boyd Funeral Home.” As a gay sailor who had not yet been outed and discharged under the provisions of the 1993 DADT law, August Provost was eligible for “Full Military Honors.” The Military Funeral Honors web site details what by law they must be for August Provost: “Military Funeral Honors have always been provided whenever possible. However, the law now mandates the rendering of Military Funeral Honors for an eligible veteran if requested by the family. As provided by law, an honor guard detail for the burial of an eligible veteran shall consist of not less than two members of the Armed Forces. One member of the detail shall be a representative of the parent Service of the deceased veteran. The honor detail will, at a minimum, perform a ceremony that includes the folding and presenting of the American flag to the next of kin and the playing of Taps. Taps will be played by a bugler, if available, or by electronic recording. Today, there are so few buglers available that the Military Services often cannot provide one.” Of course, Seaman Provost is due all honor by a grateful nation for his service in the Navy. Every fallen LGBT servicemember is due the full honors of the United States of America whose flag they served. But the irony fairly crackles around this funeral notice. Seaman Provost was brutally murdered, shot multiple times as if by execution. His body was found partially burned in a guard shack, probably the work of a killer intent on covering up his gruesome handiwork. Seaman Provost had confided in his family and to his same-sex lover that he had been harassed for being gay for the better part of a year by someone on base. But he would not report any of this to a superior, lest in the name of the same body of law that now covers him with honor, he be investigated and summarily drummed out of the military for being a homosexual. So, someone finally worked his evil, and Seaman Provost died, vulnerable and unprotected, a gay man like so many tens of thousands of others who vow to protect and defend the very nation that will not do the same for them. May the family, and Seaman Provost’s bereaved lover, to whom the honors of the nation refuse to extend in President Obama’s America, find comfort for their loss. May Seaman Provost rest in peace in Houston National Cemetery, covered with honor as he should be. But the rest of us should be put on notice that DADT must not stand one day longer, else this brave gay man will have died in some sense bitterly. As for us at the Unfinished Lives Project, we cannot help being Red, White, and terribly Sad.
DADT Claims Another Victim: Gay Sailor August Provost
Beaumont, TX – East Texas is not what an informed person would call a hotbed of liberalism. But the East Texas aunt of murdered gay sailor, August Provost, is speaking out against the investigation of the Navy into her nephew’s execution-style murder at Camp Pendleton, California. Rose Roy of Beaumont claims that a full year before his murder, Seaman August Provost complained that he was being harassed for being gay. Provost’s lover has corroborated the same story when he spoke out to the press on July 4. Mrs. Roy and other family members encouraged Seaman Provost to document the incidents and inform his superiors in the Navy about them, but she found out that he was afraid to do so because of the military ban on homosexuality, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). She told reporters for KBMT News that he was discouraged by the possibility that the Navy would have launched an investigation into his private life, so he didn’t pursue the matter officially. Now, the Navy is discouraging any suggestion that Provost, an African American patriot from Houston, TX, was murdered because of his sexual orientation. A spokesman refuses to give any other motive for the killing. Provost was shot multiple times, and his corpse was set afire in a guard shack in an apparent attempt to destroy evidence. According to statistics kept by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), nearly 13,000 members of the U.S. Military have been discharged under the provisions of the 1993 DADT law. That amounts to about one person each and every day. Since President Barak Obama was inaugurated, 284 Americans have been discharged from the military thanks to DADT. The untold story is the toll in lives lost because of murders that could possibly have been prevented were DADT not in place, not to mention the number of suicides among LGBTQ sailors, soldiers, airmen, coast guardsmen, and marines.
Sending the Devil to Hell for a Trial?: DFW Leaders Demand Independent Investigation in Rainbow Lounge Raid
Fort Worth, TX – In the wee hours of Sunday, June 28, 40 years to the day after the Stonewall Inn Raid in Greenwich Village that sparked the Stonewall Rebellion against anti-LGBT oppression, officers of the Fort Worth Police and the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission raided the Rainbow Lounge. Unlike other so-called “checks” of liquor licenses, the police came hot to trot with a paddy wagon, plastic zip cuffs, and bad attitudes, according to many eye-witnesses and targets in the bar. Word spread fast. Now the Rainbow Lounge Raid is making national and international news, and the police are changing their tunes about what they did on that fateful night when LGBT Pride was challenged by force once again. Originally, FWPD Chief of Police Halstead claimed that officers had been “groped” by at least one patron of the bar, and that the severe cranial injury sustained by Chad Gibson, 26, who was arrested for “public intoxication” was due to “alcohol poisoning.” This is not the first time some version of the tired “gay panic defense” has been marshaled to justify overkill in the treatment of LGBT people. Ironically, hate crimes perpetrators are generally the ones who use the “blame the victim” technique to blur the oppression of LGBT people. That peace officers used it in Fort Worth is nearly as noteworthy as their choice of the Stonewall Anniversary to carry out their assault. Now Chief Halstead is changing stories, saying that Gibson, who is still critical in John Peter Smith Hospital in ICU, was injured “while in custody of the TABC.”
Local business, civic, and activist leaders are calling for an independent investigation of the actions of the FWPD and the TABC during the Raid. Fearing loss of face for Cowtown, as well as loss of business, leaders are demanding more than an internal investigation that may be self-serving at best. Meanwhile, Gibson struggles to heal. No costs of his hospitalization or damages will be forthcoming from the officers who slammed his head into a bathroom step at the Rainbow Lounge, for they are indemnified against facing responsibility for what they did by the state and the city. Too bad. As long as harsh treatment can be whitewashed clean by internal investigations and bureaucratic red tape, LGBT people cannot feel safe anywhere in the Metroplex. The Rainbow Lounge Raid proves that much, at least. The public has yet to hear a full-throated demand for justice from the Fort Worth LGBT community. While some are courageously speaking out, the so-called “Fort Worth way” is in full display, with queer folk in Cowtown still keeping their heads low for the most part. 
As the days drag on from the time of the Raid, and as Gibson fights to get better from bleeding on the brain in ICU, the Fort Worth LGBT community may yet find its voice. One of the most telling witness statements from a patron of the Rainbow Lounge on the night of the raid was that the assault by police “was just like Stonewall without fighting back.” The spirit of Stonewall is resistance, plain an simple. Non-resistance is not and never has been the Stonewall way, and Fort Worth LGBT people and their allies have to find more spine if they are to have freedom and equality in deep, dark red Tarrant County, stronghold of right wing Republicanism in North Texas.
This story has all the makings of a regional earthquake in human rights: Excessive police force, severely injured LGBT people, gay panic defense, police cover-up attempts, heterosexist attitudes, terror in the queer community, and finally, the will to resist on the part of gay men and lesbians who have had enough jawboning and harm from their elected leaders and law enforcement agencies. Passively allowing the law enforcement agencies and city officials responsible for this outrage to mollify the public with “internal investigations” is like sending the Devil to Hell for a trial. No jury in perdition would ever find him guilty. Without consistent pressure coupled with open communications, things will pretty much go back to homophobic normal in Cowtown. Instead of an earthquake, all Fort Worth may experience from this unwarranted use of brute force will be a shrug. The coming days will see if the North Texas children of Stonewall will rise up and seize the moment, or not.
~ Stephen V. Sprinkle, Director of the Unfinished Lives Project
Hate Crimes Victims Remembered at Dallas Day of Decision Protest
Hundreds gathered to hear speakers call for protests in the streets to show the determination of the LGBT community to have equal rights. The Dallas gayborhood rang with with voices of protesters in the largest street demonstration in years along Oaklawn and Cedar Springs. Blake Wilkinson of Queer LiberAction named Matthew Shepard whose death 10 years ago has not yet been vindicated by federal hate crimes legislation. He urged protesters to get angry that LGBT advocacy for hate crimes victims is so ineffective that a decade out from the Shepard murder, the queer community still does not have laws protecting LGBT people from being bashed and killed. Then Wilkinson called on the crowd to channel that anger into effective local, state and national action, starting in the streets, with gay folk taking their message of equality to the people.
The large crowd moved up Cedar Springs Road to TMC, The Mining Company, a popular gay bar on the strip with a large, street side patio, where the rally heard a number of powerful speeches protesting “separate but equal,” second-class status for LGBT Americans.
Dallas Queer LiberAction protest at the Legacy of Love column (Dallas Voice photo)
About
If you are a first-time visitor to the Unfinished Lives Project website, we invite you to read A Welcome Message introducing you to our project. We are truly grateful for your visit.
The Unfinished Lives Project website is a place of public discourse which remembers and honors LGBTQ hate crime victims, while also revealing the reality of unseen violence perpetrated against people whose only “offense” is their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender presentation. LGBTQ people in the United States are suffering a slow-rolling decimation of terror and murder all across the country. Every locale and demographic of society are affected: First Nations, Anglo, Black, Latino and Latina, South and Southeast Asian, Transgender, Bisexuals, Gay men, Lesbians, disabled, young, and mature. Homophobia has a long, crooked arm, and it is reaching out to snatch the life away from women and men whose tragic stories are under-reported to begin with, and whose memories are swiftly forgotten.
The horror of these killings transcends the shock and bereavement of loved ones and friends. These are not typical homicides; they are not killings for money or drugs, incidents of domestic strife, or crimes of passion. The vicious nature of hate crimes against LGBTQ persons is extremely brutal, grotesquely violent, and egregiously hateful.
Each murder serves the LGBTQ population as a sobering warning about the actual level of danger in our communities. The message these killings send is that freedom and open life for LGBTQ people is a cruel dream. Every time we remember one of these victims, however, the intentions of their killers are frustrated. To remember these women and men is to begin the process of changing the culture that killed them.
Our Project Director
Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle (Keith Tew photo).
Stephen V. Sprinkle is Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry, and Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas, a post he has held since 1994. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the first open and out Gay scholar in the history of the Divinity School, and the first open and out LGBTQ person to be tenured there. Read More…
Recent Social Justice Advocacy Activity By Dr. Sprinkle
Summer 2009 – Dr. Sprinkle responded to the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s newest gay bar, on June 28, 2009, the exact 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Dr. Sprinkle was invited to speak at three protest events sponsored by Queer LiberAction of Dallas. Here, he is keynoting the Rainbow Lounge Protest at the Tarrant County Courthouse on July 12, 2009. Read More…
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Dr. Sprinkle has given his Unfinished Lives presentation to these and other community groups and organizations. Read More…
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Steve Sprinkle
Unfinished Lives: Remembering LGBT Hate Crime VictimsBrite Divinity School/Texas Christian UniversityFort Worth TXprofessor, minister, author, blogger, LGBTQ advocate
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